NASA’s Commercial Crew Program will deliver U.S. astronauts into low-Earth orbit, from U.S. soil, and aboard a U.S. spacecraft, for the first time since the end of the Space Shuttle era. Image Credit: NASA

This week’s announcement by NASA of eight additional crew-rotation missions to the International Space Station (ISS)—four each by Commercial Crew transportation Capability (CCtCap) partners Boeing and SpaceX—now secures the maximum number of contracted flights available to them. When the two companies were chosen in September 2014, after a multi-phase selection campaign, the terms of the combined $6.8 billion contract called for uncrewed and piloted test flights of their respective spacecraft to the ISS, followed by “at least two, and as many as six” operational Post-Certification Missions (PCMs) to deliver and exchange long-duration crew members to the orbital outpost. Boeing and SpaceX have now received the full complement of six operational missions apiece and, according to NASA, this recent award enables them to plan for all aspects of the flights and fulfil ISS transportation needs through 2024.

“Awarding these missions now will provide greater stability for the future space station crew rotation schedule, as well as reduce schedule and financial uncertainty for our providers,” said Phil McAlister, director, NASA’s Commercial Spaceflight Development Division. “The ability to turn on missions as needed to meet the needs of the space station program is an important aspect of the Commercial Crew Program.”

Expedition 43 Commander Terry Virts is pictured inside the Harmony node, with his back to the forward end of the module. Unused as a docking port since the end of the space shuttle era, it will soon be given a new lease of life as the primary interface for Commercial Crew vehicles. Photo Credit: NASA

Within months of being selected, in May 2015 Boeing received its first PCM mission award, as part of its $4.2 billion slice of the CCtCap contract. It was noted at the time that this and future orders would typically be made two to three years ahead of flight, thereby providing sufficient time for the fabrication and integration both the spacecraft and its launch vehicle. Boeing’s CST-100 vehicle—subsequently renamed “Starliner”—will fly atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V booster, whilst SpaceX’s Crew Dragon will ride the Upgraded Falcon 9. Both capsule-based spacecraft can deliver long-duration crews and up to 220 pounds (100 kg) of payloads to the space station, remain docked for around seven months, and provide an emergency-return capability if needed.

In the meantime, efforts to develop the spacecraft and rockets for the inaugural Commercial Crew flights continued. By the fall of 2015, the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility (C3PF)—formerly part of the shuttle-era Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF)—at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida was formally unveiled and by mid-2016 the crew module for the Starliner Structural Test Article (STA) was assembled and the upper and lower pressure domes for the first flight-like vehicle were delivered for checkout. Elsewhere, SpaceX worked to weld pressure vessels onto four Crew Dragons at its Hawthorne, Calif., headquarters. Two of these vehicles would be utilized for qualification tests and the others for actual missions. In the meantime, the Crew Access Tower (CAT) for Starliner operations at Space Launch Complex (SLC)-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station began to take shape, as revealed in an AmericaSpace imagery feature.

Although four NASA veterans—Eric Boe, Doug Hurley, Sunita Williams, and former Chief Astronaut Bob Behnken—were assigned in July 2015 to the initial Starliner and Crew Dragon test flights, it remains to be seen which missions they will respectively fly. “No Commercial Crew assignments have been made at this time,” NASA’s Brandi Dean told AmericaSpace. “The four astronauts … have been designated as part of the Commercial Crew ‘cadre’, but no decisions have been announced as to who will fly on what flight or even the order that the vehicles will fly in.” Last April, Boe and Williams tried out new-generation touchscreen simulators of Starliner at Boeing’s St. Louis facility in Missouri.

Whether a Starliner or a Crew Dragon, the reality remains that neither Commercial Crew vehicle will reach space in an uncrewed or piloted configuration before 2018. Last May, Boeing confirmed to investors that its crewed Starliner test flight had moved from its original December 2017 target to no sooner than 2018. It is currently understood that the uncrewed Starliner test flight will now launch no earlier than June 2018, followed by the piloted test flight a couple of months later, no sooner than August. It was reported at the time that issues related to Starliner’s mass, together with software and aeroacoustic concerns associated with integration with the Atlas V launch vehicle, were to blame.

As outlined by AmericaSpace’s Mike Killian, SpaceX confirmed last month that it had pushed the first piloted mission of its Crew Dragon to May 2018, although the uncrewed test flight remains targeted for launch in November 2017. The uncrewed missions are expected to visit the space station for approximately 30 days—via the recently-installed International Docking Adapter (IDA)-2 interface on the forward “end” of the Harmony node—whilst the piloted missions by Boe, Hurley, Williams, and Behnken are expected to fly for around 14 days in duration.

A recent report from NASA’s Office of Inspector-General on Commercial Crew indicated that the delays might stretch even further to the right, with astronauts not reaching space aboard either Starliners or Crew Dragons until the fall of 2018. This represents a delay of more than three years beyond NASA’s original goal of restoring its capability to launch U.S. astronauts, from U.S. soil, and aboard a U.S. spacecraft, for the first time since the end of the space shuttle era. The OIG report, published last September, highlighted that Congressional funding shortfalls have “contributed” to the delay, but that “technical challenges” with the spacecraft designs were now “driving the schedule slippages.”

NASA has previously emphasized that the orders awarded to Boeing and SpaceX do not necessarily imply that Crew Dragon will fly ahead of Starliner, or vice-versa. However, with neither craft expected to reach space before the middle of 2018, a highly undesirable seven years will have elapsed since the last U.S. piloted spacecraft returned to Earth from its final mission. This is significantly longer than the almost-six-year span between the end of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) mission in July 1975 and the maiden voyage of Space Shuttle Columbia in April 1981. And although U.S. astronauts have maintained a continuous presence in space during the interim, the fact remains that the uneasy relationship with Russia will continue for the foreseeable future.

Didn’t SpaceX project its’ price per flight to be around $25,000,000 per astronaut? Which puts the price at $175,000,000 per Crew Dragon mission to the ISS. SpaceX should be able to get around 9 to 12 flights to the ISS by 2024 for what it bid. Didn’t they need $500 million to $1 billion to finish developing the Crew Dragon? And Boeing should be able to get 8 to 10 flights once final development costs for Starliner are factored in. Perhaps now would be a good time to analyze the costs for each provider one more time.

That’s good news on the awarding the operational flights to each provider. I wonder if they were trying to get this in before the Presidential changeover. Sort of make it hard to favor one crew provider or harder to cancel the flights.